If desired, you can specify reserve and quota sizes for each volume. When a single APFS container has multiple volumes, the container’s free space is shared and is automatically allocated to any of the individual volumes as needed. macOS 10.13 or later supports APFS for both bootable and data volumes.ĪPFS allocates disk space within a container (partition) on demand. While APFS is optimized for the Flash/SSD storage used in recent Mac computers, it can also be used with older systems with traditional hard disk drives (HDD) and external, direct-attached storage. This takes a lot longer, and it should only make sense for older drives, as newer ones shouldn't have bad sectors yet.Apple File System (APFS), the default file system for Mac computers using macOS 10.13 or later, features strong encryption, space sharing, snapshots, fast directory sizing, and improved file system fundamentals. If you disable it, Windows will also check for bad sectors on the drive to assess the integrity of the files and potential risks to other files you store on it. Quick format is an option enabled by default to speed up the process.Volume label is the name that's associated with the drive when you plug it into a device.Nowadays, most files are too large for this to make a huge difference, so the default value should be good enough. Allocation unit size changes the size of clusters of files, which means that a minimum amount of space will always be occupied by a file, even if the file itself is smaller than the size of the cluster.exFAT is likely the best middle ground for modern devices. exFAT and NTFS don't have this size limit, but may not be compatible with older devices, particularly NTFS. FAT32 is the best option for compatibility, but it only allows file sizes up to 4GB.

File system, as explained above, affects compatibility and also maximum file and partition sizes.Capacity is the size of the drive, and it can't be changed.The Format dialog will show up with a few options:.

Flash disk format for mac and windows